Update on New Year's Resoloution

I briefly mentioned here and here that I had made some new year's resolutions.  I'm not sure of the wisdom of doing this.  I had intended for the scope of this blog to be my commentary on world events.  My new year's resolutions might qualify for world changing events from my perspective, but it might not be such for you my readers.
I told you I would let you know about my progress though, so at the risk of going beyond the focus of my blog I'll do what I said I would do.  I'll just try to keep my resolutions to myself next year.
First of all, one of my resolutions was to read the Bible.  My wife and I have been sitting down over breakfast every morning and reading the Bible all year.  This has been the best thing that I have ever done.  My wife and I have grown closer in this one month of doing this than we had in all of last year.  More importantly I think we both have gotten closer to God.  I recommend that you click the link above, bookmark it, and follow along.  I started another blog to document my thoughts and prayers during this.  You can find it at http://thoughtsandprayers-michael.blogspot.com/ if you are interested.
In other good news I have been losing weight.  My wife has too.  We've both been exercising as well, and I can see the results in both of our moods.  There have been some days recently when I haven't wanted to work out.  My wife has been working out every day.  I'm going to follow her example more.
I can't say that I have gotten rid of as much stuff as I would have liked to by now.  I have to renew my efforts in this area.
Well that's my follow up so far.  I'll post about this again in a few months.  I don't want to do it too often so that I can get back to the original intent of this blog.  Just please bear with me while I finish out what I started.

State of the Union

President Obama said “There’s a reason why many doctors, nurses, and health care experts who know our system best consider this approach a vast improvement over the status quo. But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”

Since this is where I make my comments here we go.  First of all the reason that many doctors, nurses, and health care experts consider the approach in question to be a vast improvement is that anything would be a vast improvement.  Health insurance companies have taken over health care.  They deny coverage for people who are sick, charge unreasonable amounts for premiums, and then deny payments to the medical professionals who are actually treating the sick.  I submit that the health insurance companies themselves are the problem.  If you want to hear that from someone smarter than me I’ll refer you to Dr. Steffie Wollhandler.  I don’t happen to agree with her about the “Medicare for all” idea, but that’s simply because Medicare is insurance as well.  However, the “Medicare for all” plan would be a better approach that would meet your criteria above.

A more reasonable approach would be to hire the medical professionals on a salary basis to treat all the sick and injured.  You could give them more than they are making now, pay off their college loans and still save money since you are bypassing the health insurance company middle man.  This would cost less than the “Medicare for all” plan, and when it would cost less for the American people when you consider the increase in taxes would be offset by not having to pay an insurance premium.

I know that you aren’t going to do either of these because the health insurance lobby is too powerful.  You have explained that.  There have been times over the last year that it wasn’t clear what you wanted aside from health care reform that doesn't hurt the insurance companies.  Perhaps this will meet your criteria. 

• End the practice of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.  This will enable people to get insurance. 
• Define health insurance packages.  I’ve seen negotiations for health insurance for a small business.  When you shop around you have to be really careful that the coverage is the same.  One company might sound good, but then somewhere in the policy you end up finding out about some piece of coverage that does not match.  The idea here is to have a few standardized labels so that anyone can compare prices apples to apples.  This will drive down premiums. 
• Make sure that the health insurance packages can not preclude supplemental insurance.  Maybe it’s just me but I would rather pay a premium for supplemental insurance that I know is coming than pay a deductable (or a bunch of co-pays) as a surprise.  On the face of it you might think that this would increase costs.  Over the longer term I would suspect that it would encourage people to get things looked at sooner which usually translates into cheaper.  The reason it works out the other way for insurance companies now is that they are considering the term of the policy.  If they were actually concerned with their customers well being the co-pays and deductibles would be lower.  Another way to handle this would be to drop co-pays across the board.  
• Define coverage criteria for everything across the board.  For each procedure that a provider performs there could be as many different forms, or steps to get paid as there are different plans.  Since one insurance company can have a multitude of plans it can get confusing really quick.  Set the coverage criteria for each procedure in law and make them as objective as possible.  I would suggest a group of providers and insurance company representatives get together and hammer this out.  This protects the American people from getting health insurance that isn’t worth anything.  If done well it will cut costs for both the provider and the insurance company since everybody would know the rules. Note: If the insurance companies object to this on the grounds that having to pay more claims will mean higher premiums (which they will) make sure to get a list of exactly who is objecting because they are basically saying that they had no intention of paying legitimate claims which might be grounds for criminal charges.
• Require everyone who can afford it to buy health insurance. This is mainly to placate the insurance lobby, but it could actually help providers as well.  Knowing that someone has health insurance and knowing the coverage criteria makes it a lot easier to get paid.  You then just have to find out who to send the bill to.  

So far this approach should reduce premiums, reduce cost, and cost very little to the government.  In fact it might come out as a gain for the government since the coverage criteria thing might best be enforced with fines. The following things might also save some money.

• Drop Medicaid and instead create a system of clinics and hospitals that uninsured people can use.   I'm sure that this would save money overall.  I'm not sure that it would save money for the federal government.  
• Set up a national health records database.  This will help with enforcing the uniform coverage criteria above.  This will help with diagnosing problems quickly.  The technology to do this is established.  I understand the privacy concerns, but this type of technology could save a life.  Privacy concerns should always be less important than saving a life.

This part will cost some money, but we just saved money while covering the uninsured.

• Expand Health Savings Accounts by allowing people to have them regardless of the type of insurance they carry.  
• Increase finding to Medicare.

I don't really think that this will get done.  I just thought I would let you know how.

 

Super Bowl

I wasn’t planning on watching the Super Bowl this year.  I usually do, but I was going to skip it this time.  I’m not a big football fan.  I like to see a hard fought game once in a while, but I’m not enough of a fan to know whether or not this year’s match up will be like that.  In past years I have tuned in as much for the commercials as the game itself.  This year I figured I would watch something else and catch the commercials later.

Then I saw this today.  Now I want to see the Super Bowl just to see this one ad.  CBS if you are reading this also let your advertisers know that I’ll be watching their ads too.  Since I’m closer to the commercials target audience than the three women from NOW who would have otherwise watched the Super Bowl I should be able to make up for their boycott by myself. 

Also, while I have your attention, I’m curious about what motivated you and the other networks to establish policies that “rule out the broadcast of certain types of contentious advocacy ads”.  I don’t see what you get out of the policy.  I can certainly understand making sure that your content doesn’t get you in trouble with the FCC, but that’s not what this policy seems to be about.  It seems to me that you are limiting your advertiser base for no reason with this policy. 

Just to clear things up about women’s rights.  I’m all for women’s rights as long as women do not claim the right to kill their children.  If abortion could be done without killing a child in the process I would be for it.  This may actually be possible at some point in the future.  I have seen news that they have been able to transplant a uterus.  If they could find a way to do this safely while the baby grows inside they could end the abortion debate and help countless infertile women at the same time.  

As it is it seems like organizations like NOW tend to miss the fact that every human life has unlimited potential.  This is shortsighted and silly.  In the long term the unplanned pregnancies of today may turn into the Einstiens, Hawkings, or Mother Teresas of tomorrow, but even if they don’t they deserve a chance.

Cell phones and GPS

Sorry about not posting for a while.  If you know me you know that there are times that I don’t have a lot to say.  In the description part I mention that I got tired of registering with different websites to comment on stuff so I started a blog.  Lately the news has been covered over with coverage of Haiti, and I really don’t have a lot to say about that.  I’m not saying that there isn’t anything to say about it.  I’m saying that I’m not the one to talk about the place because I’ve never been there.  The best I can do for those people is to pray for them.  I am doing that, and I hope you are to. 

I’ll try to stick to things that I think I understand.  If I’m wrong about something I trust that someone will comment on it.  I have enabled moderation on the comments, but I just want to keep the blog clean.  If you comment using non-military grade language I’ll post it even if you disagree with me.  I know all three of my followers and I don’t think that you will be posting anything bad, but the blog itself could be read and commented on by anyone in the world.  So far all the feedback that I have gotten has been positive.  I’ll take that to mean that the whole world agrees with me ;-)

Anyway, I saw this article about Nokia giving away navigation software.  I know a little about navigation systems.  In the Army we had the boxes that would give us the grid coordinates of our current position sometimes down to one meter accuracy.  They still taught us land navigation by compass and map because not everyone was issued a GPS and batteries can die.  I had a car with factory GPS installed.  I own a tom-tom.  I also own a droid.  So I’ve experienced navigation from compass to cell phone.

Nokia’s move here should not come as a surprise to anyone.  I would be surprised if Apple didn’t make the same move.  The way I see it the cell phone is where the GPS unit belongs.  The in car navigation was stunk.  The GPS unit itself was probably pretty good, but the maps weren’t updated.  With a cell phone you can easily download updates. 

Also it’s not going to be long till someone figures out that you could have the cell phone update a centralized map with routes taken and travel times so that you could have maps that update themselves with new roads and such automatically.  All they would have to do is assume that say 500 phones traveling along a path between 15 and 100mph means that they are on a road or railroad and bounce that off of railway maps to make sure that you are looking at a road.  You may have to add some time constraint to keep the people who drive ATVs and motorcycles off road from making a road on your map, but this isn’t too hard to do.

This would give you the ability to account for traffic patterns when your program looks for routes to take to your destination.  You could also have the cell phone send up an alert when it is traveling at a slower than expected speed.  Then the central map could kick out a detour for all the other phones using their software to avoid the slowdown.

Tom-Tom could do this if they included some way for their units to call home.  I bought a cheap model so it’s possible that they have this without me knowing about it.  The problem with this is that at some point the cell phone carriers will realize that people might not want a smart phone if the already have a Tom-Tom which would make Tom-Tom a competitor.  You don’t see businesses playing nice with their competition so Tom-Tom’s data plan is likely to go up.  Same thing applies with any other manufacturer of stand alone GPS units.  The only to deal with this would be for the GPS maker to come out with a way to tether off a less smart phone.  If they can’t do this the stand alone GPS will be almost dead.  There will still be a market for the ruggedized ones among hikers, hunters, and such.  That’s the way I see it.

T.S.A. watchlist

OK, I saw this today and I just have to comment.  To be very polite this is stupid.  What possible reason do you have for searching an eight year old every time he flies.  I understand that his name is on your list, but are you really that stupid.  Apparently you are.

I know you are listening so here's an idea.  Since you have a list why not start eliminating people who are obviously not the ones you are looking for?  Start interviewing each of the people that you can find anywhere with those names and figure out if they are the ones that you need.  You might actually find the people before they get to the airport.  By checking off the eight year old scouts from your list you can save your people some work at the airport where they really need to be looking at real threats.

Sick

This morning my wife woke up and promptly threw up.  I was feeling a little off, but as I tend to do I ignored it.  I got my son to school and got worse.  I called the boss and told him I'm sick.  Everything is a chore.  I just walked to the front door to let the dogs out and got out of breath.  I don't know if this is from being sick or working out this week.  Like a lot of things it's probably a little of both.
So here I am feeling weak and watching MSNBC.  They have brought up the campaign promise that Obama gave about having the healthcare meetings televised so that there are no secrets.  I think that this is a wonderful idea, but it was beyond Obama's ability as president to make happen.  I think that it would be a great idea for all congressional meetings to be televised or recorded in some way so that there are no secrets for any laws that are getting made.  I understand that some things need to be kept secret because of ongoing operations, but most things should be in the open.  This would give you the reasons that your person voted one way or another which is just as important as how they voted.

YOU LOST TRACK OF WHAT????!!!!!!!

That's the first thing that I thought when I read  this .  How do you loose track of six trucks full of weapons and explosives?

No wonder they closed the embassy.  I saw photos of the place.  Five well placed blocks of C4 and it's gone.  Well maybe ten.  Either way a truckload not so well placed will do the job several times.

It's just beyond my imagination that they could lose track of even one truck of weapons.  In the Army we had to sign for each weapon that was taken out of the arms room.  Every day the armorer would count all the weapons and signatures.  If one was missing they would shut down the post.  If we transported weapons the people transporting them would be armed.  This was in the states before 9/11.  This happened in Yemen where thw government knows there are extremists who would love to get these weapons.  Again, how do you loose a truck loaded with weapons?  

I was at : 35 Poplar Springs Rd, Ringgold, GA 30736,

Birthday, frozen pipes, and Bible reading

Thanks to all of you who wished me a happy birthday yesterday.  Those of you who didn’t I understand.  I mean it’s not every year that you turn 26, but it has been for me for the last sixteen years so you might have thought you already sent your happy birthday wishes for this one.  Of course you might have been dealing with frozen water pipes like I was.  You don’t appreciate how much you depend on water being there until it’s not.  I guess a lot of things are like that.  The frozen pipes meant that I couldn’t make my coffee in the morning.  This meant that I wasn’t thinking clearly for a while.  This made finding the frozen pipe that much more challenging. 

As I read what I just wrote it strikes me how spoiled I am.  As well as losing weight I have decided to read the Bible this year.  Yesterday’s experience and camping last October adds some perspective to what I’m reading.  I don’t pretend to really “get it” because these people had to make their own stuff, dig their wells, build shelters, and generally do a lot more just to get by than I have to do now.  I came somewhat closer when I was an Infantryman in the Army, but even then we had equipment and they brought us water and food. 

Today’s Bible reading makes this point even more clear.  I whine about not being able to brew my morning coffee.  Job lost everything and still praised God.  Job remembered who all the stuff belonged to in the first place.  I tend to forget this point.  It’s not that I intentionally forget.  I just get used to the small things that I have that are not guaranteed. If I bring out of that a better appreciation of what I have then I have been given something great.

Tiger Woods

 Just saw this story about Tiger.   Of course the story can't be true.  Everyone knows that a nine iron has too much loft for this.  Now, if it was a seven or six I could beleive it.

New Year's Resolution

This morning on the radio they said that one of the best ways to keep your new year's resolution is to write it down.  I'll write it down here for all the world to see.  Later in the year I'll even let you know how it turned out.  


First, I'll let you know about how I came up with the resolution.  Yesterday I was having lunch at the local pizza buffet cheating on the contest and the T.V. there was playing CMT cribs.  The show was basically about country music stars showing their houses to the world (I guess it is some sort of service for Nashville area burgulars).  Anyway many of these people had four cars and two drivers.  As I was wondering about what possible reason they had for this I remembered what someone once told me about how when you point your finger at someone you have three pointed back at yourself.  This got me to thinking about all the stuff that I have and don't need.


I have stuff around my house that I don't have a place for.  I have stuff that I don't remember getting.  I also remember getting some stuff which I might use if I could find it.  I don't think this problem is because of the size of my house.  I have a three story house, and there are three people who live here.  No this is a problem of too much stuff and not enough getting rid of stuff.


So my resolution this year is about less.  I want to keep less stuff.  I want to weigh less. I want to buy less stuff.  The things that I do keep I want to keep in a place that I can find it easily.  


My plan for doing this is simple.  I'm going to start making sure that I everything I have is something I want to keep and put it in it's place.  If it doesn't have a place I'm getting rid of it.  Before I buy something I'm going to find a place for it.  


My weight loss plan is simple as well.  I found a website where I can record my calories in and out.  All the diets in the world are some form of calorie counting.  This one can also set up a workout routine for you.  I figure if I burn more calories than I take in I have to loose weight.